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People Speak Newsletter
January 2009
http://www.MarionDuckworthMinistries.com
“Your father gave me this,” my mother told me the day she showed me a silver necklace. “After my thyroid surgery he had it made to cover the scar.” Except for her wedding band, it was the most valuable piece of jewelry she owned and one of the few items remaining from her nearly twenty year marriage.
My mother was working in a facility for the mentally ill when she met my dad. They fell in love and married. He was a successful businessman with money to spend on his new wife. “Joe liked to take me to dress shops in New York City and have me pick out whatever I’d like.” But when his mental health began to deteriorate, she recalled that “He took a trip to try to get himself together, but it didn’t help.”
He was declared schizophrenic with catatonia and descended into a dark abyss. Painfully and reluctantly, she had him committed to a mental health facility where he spent the rest of his life. Never once during all the years that we existed on charity (she was a semi-invalid and as a result couldn’t hold down a job), do I remember her blaming him. To do so, of course, would have been illogical. After all his illness wasn’t his fault. While he had abandoned her and their child, he hadn’t done so intentionally. Emotion, however, isn’t always logical.
Even when he was became so ill that he rarely spoke, she could not forget the man that he had been: generous, kind and funny. “I wonder that the horse pulling the wagon that took you home didn’t break down carrying such a heavyweight,” he’d written in one of his love letters to her, teasing because she was so thin. Although my father was mentally incompetent, mother still loved the man she had married and believed that love is loyal, no matter the cost.
During the years he was institutionalized she and I existed on charity, men propositioned her, wanting to share her bed. “Be nice to me and I’ll see that you get some extra money.” One potential suitor did want to court her with marriage in mind. But she refused to divorce my father even though she knew there was no cure for his illness. To be sure she was right, she searched the Bible and came away certain about her decision.
“I married for better or worse, for richer or poorer.” Pragmatically, she concluded that the first years were better and richer, the last years were worse and poorer.
Was her decision to stay married to my father the only option Scripture permitted? Perhaps not, but she saw it as her only godly option. She was decisive; she was determined: she would not abandon my father. To the end of her life, she remained a strong advocate on his behalf.
That is the legacy she left me. Keep your promises no matter what it costs and trust God to meet your needs.
Blessings,
Marion Duckworth
Read more about healing from abandonment on my website: www.marionduckworthministries.com
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